Taking control

Mustangs run clock in 2nd half

CORPUS CHRISTI - Ingleside's offense can beat you in any number of ways. On Friday, the Mustangs needed just one way to beat West Oso.

Ingleside used a grind-it-out offense to play keep away from West Oso in the second half to walk away with a 28-20 win and its second straight District 30-3A title.

Ingleside (8-1 overall, 4-0 district) will enter the playoffs as the big-school representative. West Oso (7-2, 3-1) can lock up the second seed in the district with a win at Orange Grove next week.

In the battle for the district title, the game was tied at 14 before Ingleside cranked things up with a dose of smashmouth football. The Mustangs rushed for more yards on their first possession of the second half than they did in the entire first half. Ingleside scored three second-half touchdowns all on the ground, and only went to the air six times in the final 24 minutes.

"There's an old saying that you've got to take what they give you, and West Oso was playing us pretty loose trying to stop our passing game and trying not to get beat by the long ball," Ingleside coach Graig Hesseltine said.

"So we started running up the middle a little in the second half. We were going to do it until they adjusted to it and stopped it, but they never really adjusted."

That allowed Ingleside to put together a nine-play drive to open the second half that was capped by a Josh Coffield 27-yard touchdown run to put the Mustangs up 21-14.

West Oso quickly answered three plays later with a Shedrick Howard eight-yard touchdown run, but a missed extra point left the score at 21-20.

Ingleside went to the ground again with a 10-play drive sealed with a Green Hill 5-yard touchdown run that put Ingleside up 28-20.

West Oso's offense was forced to punt on its next possession and would only get the ball back one more time. On that final possession, the Bears got their own 39 with less than four minutes remaining in the game before Ingleside's Jesse Martinez came up with a huge interception of William Tortorello's pass that clinched the win.

"It's tough when you only get to run 13 plays on offense in the entire second half," West Oso coach Mark Guess said. "Our defense couldn't get them off the field, so our offense couldn't get a chance. Give credit to Ingleside, they did a good job of running the football in the second half."